Horatio Potter

Who was Horatio Potter?

The Right Reverend Horatio Potter, was an Episcopal Bishop in the Diocese of New York.

The youngest brother of Bishop Alonzo Potter, he was born near Beekman, Dutchess County, New York on 9 February 1802, to Quaker farmers Joseph and Anne Potter. He graduated at Union College in 1826, was ordained priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1828, was rector for several months in Saco, Maine, and from 1828 to 1833 was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Washington College, Hartford, Connecticut.

From 1833 to 1854 he was rector of St. Peter's Church, Albany, New York. In November 1854 he was elected provincial bishop of New York in place of Benjamin Treadwell Onderdonk, who had been suspended after a scandal, and upon Onderdonk's death he became Diocesan bishop.

He was married first to Mary Jane Tomlinson, who died in 1847 leaving six children. In 1853 he married Mary Atchison Pollock whom he had met on a tour of Scotland. During his career he traveled to Britain several times.

On March 8, 1864 Bishop Potter laid the cornerstone for the Church of the Incarnation located at 205-209 Madison Avenue.

In 1865 Bishop Potter created the Sisterhood of St. Mary now called the Community of St. Mary; in doing so, he was the first bishop in the Anglican community to constitute a new monastic order in over two centuries.